Pinching your sweetie’s backsi… oops, I mean.. Pinching BACK your plants!  Here in the Greenhouse I call my Living Room, we need to pay a little more attention to our sprouts than we have been.  Now that they are growing with gusto, it’s time to make them even healthier and stronger.  How to do this you ask?  By pinching back new growth (I know, it sounds counter-intuitive, just trust me), to stimulate the plant to grow MORE leaves and to become fuller, you have to ‘pinch’ off (or use scissors) new growth to get MORE new growth…I hope you follow me, don’t get lost, it really is simple, I am living proof that it can be done.

Take at look at the photo below, see where the red arrow is pointing?  Take a sharp pair of scissors (no, don’t RUN with them, we must practice safety here in the greenhouse) and snip right above where the new growth is sprouting from the main stem.

This will encourage the plant to make new leaf nodes (and more of them) all over the plant.  We want bushy plants, with lots of branches that will sprout lots and lots of flowers to get lots and lots of tomatoes (or peppers, or tomatillos, or whatever it is you are growing for food).In a few days, you will see the plant rebound back with new growth, just keep them warm in their sunny locale.  Water when the soil starts to dry out and continue to rotate them daily so they grow straight and not leaning toward the sun.

Stay tuned.